


'til my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

by SMKoehl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, John Winchester's Bad Parenting, M/M, if I go along, will add tags as I go along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:18:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SMKoehl/pseuds/SMKoehl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he climbs in to the cab he finds the rest of his things are already sitting in the floor of the dusty pick-up, a pitiful two duffle bags that barely take up any space at all and a box of books most of which belong to Dean, later, he will be grateful for these pieces of his brother. They will form precarious stacks in the corners of dorm rooms, rest, towering, on nightstands, eventually they will fit snuggly on the shelves of a book case Sam stains cherry red himself</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

When he is thirteen he spends the night at a friend’s house. In the morning, he stumbles down the stairs half-awake to find his Uncle Bobby standing in the middle of Mrs. Johnson’s kitchen, hat gripped tight between his hands and stoic-faced, telling him to grab his stuff,

“You’re gonna be staying with me for a while.”

He doesn’t ask any questions then, overly-conscious of an audience, his friend’s mother pensive and pitying in the corner by the sink watching him with sad eyes; he saves his interrogation for the bench seat of Bobby’s truck.

When he climbs in to the cab he finds the rest of his things are already sitting in the floor of the dusty pick-up, a pitiful two duffle bags that barely take up any space at all and a box of books most of which belong to Dean, later, he will be grateful for these pieces of his brother. They will form precarious stacks in the corners of dorm rooms, rest, towering, on nightstands, eventually they will fit snuggly on the shelves of a book case Sam stains cherry red himself.

.-------------------------------------

They are half an hour into a tense silence when Bobby tells him that John has been arrested. Sam is not surprised to hear their father went down for drunken assault; he is used to the man living down to his expectations. He waves off Bobby’s apology, he knew it’d happen eventually. He is more concerned about his big brother and why isn’t he here, where did he go? Bobby doesn’t say anything for a long time, knuckles white on the steering wheel, throat working, as though searching for the right words to say. In the end all Sam gets is a ‘your brother is gonna be okay.’, and a refusal to elaborate that opens a pit in his stomach.

Sam is pretending to be asleep when he hears Bobby murmuring to the windshield, ‘Boy, I am so damn sorry.’ and knows that the intended recipient isn’t in the car.

\--------------------------------

For months he is refused all but the vaguest replies to any questions about Dean, placations and non-answers that leave him fuming. Bobby gets regular phone calls, updates where he carefully avoids saying Dean’s name, it only makes it worse when Sam enters the kitchen after the murmuring voices have quieted to find Bobby sitting heavily in a rickety chair, staring into a tumbler of whiskey with the phone sitting beside him on the table. There are screaming matches that never go his way, all he wants is answers, all he wants is his big brother, but nobody will tell him anything. He stops asking when Bobby tells him that it’s Dean’s choice to keep him in the dark.

\---------------------------------------

His fourteenth birthday is the first and only time he gets to speak to his brother. He drops his backpack by the front door, lets it shut with a bang that reverberates through the glass of the storm door and waits for the now familiar admonishment it usually inspires. Instead, Bobby ambles into the living room from the kitchen with the phone held out and Sam is too confused to take notice of his shaky hand and glassy eyes, busy putting the receiver to his ear and giving a skeptical ‘Hello’.

The tired sounding ‘Heya Sammy,’ knocks the wind out of him and it’s not until he croaks out a ‘Dean,’ that he realizes he’s crying. The call is short and Sam is too relieved to hear his brother’s voice to care that he doesn’t get any real answers.  
  
When he’s older this goodbye will haunt him.

**Author's Note:**

> title from i will wade out by e e cummings. All mistakes are mine. If someone wants to help me out, discuss, edit, let me explain what I want to do with this and tell me if it's awful and what have you, than I am more than open to that. It's gonna be sad. With a probably happy ending? (some spoilage-ish stuff? like vague delineation of plot? ) but serious stuff went down with Dean and John and Dean cut himself off from Sam, partly for his own emotional well-being, and mostly because he doesn't want Sam to be burdened by his "Bullshit", because he is a void of self-loathing and --- Sam tracks Dean down 10 years later and realized he never really had a handle on what his family life was really like, what John and Deans relationship was really like. (destiel will be a thing, and while Cas will be a huge part of Dean finding his equilibrium, it's really not the focus, simply an established fact, mostly the story is about reconciliation and Sam facing some hard truths and Dean trying to get Better and being brothers)


End file.
